Don’t worry. His real name is Benjamin Linus. 
Well this thread has inspired me to buy the books, 77 pence for 14 books on Kindle. Should keep me going for a bit!
First, on the Franco hate: I first became familiar with him recently, when he wrote a poem about my town. It’s bad. No, you just think I’m saying that, or you think, “Meh, I don’t know anything about poetry, I won’t be able to tell if it’s bad.” No. It’s really really bad. Franco thought, since he’s attending a local rich hippie school, he was qualified to write a poem about the town. A real local schooled him, in the grad student equivalent of a rap battle. It’s a thing of beauty.
Actually, I think the only way this film could possibly work would be as a con artist movie. You need to have Oz as a charlatan on the run from the law when he gets sucked up in a tornado and taken to Oz; while there he hornswoggles some local schlub into being his flunky, and together they go on a mission to fool the entire country into imagining a nonexistent threat that only Oz can solve through his nonexistent wizardry. He’d eventually con the entire land into accepting him as a wizard. In the last two pages of the screenplay, the schlub neatly piroettes with Oz, stepping into his place and relegating the American schlub into obscurity as an assistant who can only remain near power by telling people to stay away from the man behind the curtain.
But since I’m pretty sure the movie doesn’t play it as a con movie, I have no interest.
That’s not terribly far from the actual plot of the movie, except (plot spoiler ahead): 1. He’s running from a jealous boyfriend, not the law;
2. There really is a threat to Oz, although at first he is misled about what it is;
3. He’s operating a con to take the throne of Oz but develops misgivings;
4. The schlub (there is one) remains his loyal sidekick at the end
Yes but
Oz *is *the schlub. He’s talked into taking the throne of Oz by more than one of the witches, based on a prophecy he knew nothing about, and isn’t terribly enthusiastic about it. He’s more enthusiastic about not being killed, and reactive, rather than active, until the very very end.
It really is, thank you.
BOOM! 
Well, I saw both films back to back (Oz first) and while I found Jack to be charming, inventive, funny, and entertaining, I couldn’t stand Oz at all, perhaps because it reminded me so heavily of Tim Burton’s horrible Alice.
I found the CG overdone, the character dynamics charmless (especially that terrible monkey sidekick), the acting generally bad, the visual schema garish, and the story totally uninteresting (and I love the Baum books). Plus, Danny Elfman can be good but this was him on strict auto-pilot. It felt like a Raimi paycheck film–hopefully so he can do something kick-ass and R-rated again soon.
But I’ll say that Mila Kunis was smoking hot throughout the film. Resolved: She justifies the new phrase change to “Hotter than a witch’s teat”
While I agree that “the visual schema [was] garish” I felt that was appropriate in the tradition set by the 1939 movie which was the era’s equivalent of a garish, effects-laden film. That makeup! Those costumes! Those bright colors!
But I agree that the acting was weak, except for Kunis and Williams (who I think both appropriately played off of the '39 depictions of their charcters).
That’s not much of a recommendation: I’ve seen maybe thirty seconds of the movie and was able to suss out its plot? Meh. In any case, without a major twist at the end, it doesn’t work in the grand tradition of con artist movies, and without working in that grand tradition, it doesn’t sound like it’s got much interesting stuff going on.
What I found to be good:
- Pretty movie.
- Perfect for kids.
- The china doll was just about the cutest damn thing ever.
what I found to be objectionable:
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The writing really is watered down. None of the witches really have motivation to do the things they do other than one’s pure good, one’s pure evil, and one really hates James Franco.
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It strikes a bad balance between cartoon and CGI. At times it feels like a cartoon with live action actors and other times it looks like it’s intended to mimic real life but never a harmonious blend of the two. Even Burton’s Alice had a better mesh of the two. It was especially bad in the CGI greenscreen chase scene when Kunis and Franco are going up and down hills.
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Casting. I agree that it’s a catch 22 with big budget films and actors but really I found Kunis, Franco, and the bad Santa midget to be distracting. You had Weisz and Williams really getting into their whimsical characters, accents, and mannerisms then Kunis and Franco respectively pulling you out of the movie with either badly forced accents/mannerisms or totally unforced contemporary accents/mannerisms.
Basically, it’s bad when Kunis contrasts with Weisz. It’s even worse when she tries to mirror her energy. It’s bad when Franco quips “Does this thing have any brakes?!” about the magic soap bubble. It’s even worse when he announces with a flourish “We shall give them a show of a lifetime!”.
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Zach Braff comic relief monkey always taking it one quip too far.
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The entire final battle sequence. Beside the fact that it was drawn out, it seemed like a bad balance of good vs evil. There are terrifying sky baboons and fireballs, and then there are cute munchkins and fireworks. I feel like dialing down the witch’s powers would have made it a better kids movie. That or dialing up the murderous capabilities of the “good” guys would have made it a better movie overall. As it is, it’s a weak middle ground of the two.
Overall, a 6/10 but based on its merits as a kids’ movie. As a movie overall? 4.
I really like Dorkness’s pitch. I wonder if a completely new movie that nods to it could be made - like O Brother Where Art Thou?
The movie had some very good points, and many of them could be summed up as “Michelle Williams being great.” In other places it just didn’t come together. I felt like on paper it could have worked really well and given us a take on Oz through the eyes of a suspicious wise guy instead of the wide-eyed innocent heroes in the original movie. But I didn’t feel like that happened. There wasn’t enough to the story and Oz wasn’t developed well enough as a character; he just finds himself in one bizarre situation after another, squirms a bit, and then gets out of it (often because someone else saves his ass). Maybe if they’d given him some more personality and had him solve a few more problems with his ingenuity it would have worked better. The witches were also totally underwritten- Theodora/WWW in particular. I understood what they were trying to do with the character, but I thought they had a Point B without a clear Point A or a route to B. So in the second half of the movie she’s doing the Margaret Hamilton laugh at moments that don’t really make sense and looking really bizarre in that green makeup to little purpose.
I did think that there were some good parts here. The sequence where Oscar runs through the carnival toward the hot air balloon was great, the Oz visuals were very good, and I thought they did a great job bringing the elements of Oscar’s Kansas life to Oz - the China Girl/paralyzed child, his relationship with Glinda/Annie at the end. It’s just that the magic Oz stuff and the trademark Raimi reluctant weasel protagonist didn’t blend together to form a consistent tone. They kind of sat next to each other and the movie lurched back and forth.
And two minor notes: there’s something very Scrubs about Zack Braff playing a flying monkey bellhop. And the Thomas Edison speech was a good moment for Oscar’s character, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the Simpsons episode where Homer becomes obsessed with Edison.
Since a member in our family works at ESPN, we (our family) get to watch Disney movies like one week or a few days before its release in theaters for free. One time, we actually got to watch it a few weeks before. I actually watched this movie last thursday, and I liked it.
My review: probably 4.0-4.5 out of 5.0.
I’m constantly amazed that Franco keeps getting these roles. Perhaps I’m just missing the boat on this one. I’m sure he’s a fine person, so I don’t wish I’ll of him, but I wish he would go away.
Mila Kunis was terrible as well. Especially the second half. I wasn’t convinced by her motivation for turning all Hulky. And post-Hulky she was laughable rather than scary.
The one and only thing that truly impressed me about the movie was the China Girl. The XF were amazing. Whoever did the voice work had great comedic timing. It was a revelation.
The voice for the China Girl was done by the actress who played the girl in the wheelchair in the Kansas segment, Joey King.
She’s already on the path to some level of stardom- though it’s hard to plot the trajectory of any actor’s career so early on, especially when discussing a child actress. She’s certainly got Dakota Fanning potential, or Miranda Cosgrove potential at the very least. She played the lead character Ramona in the movie Ramona and Beezus. She also played the child Talia al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises.
So, yeah, you’re bound to hear more from her.
A wonderful thematic subtlety, that–the broken girl that Oz can’t/can mend–more artful than much of the film, and missed by many, I expect.
I caught that too. It’s a direct parallel to the 1939 film that the three companions of the main character are all analogues of people in Kansas, and the way Oz responds to them in Oz contrasting with the way he did back home is, in my opinion, the main point of the film.
Man, I must have just been in a bad mood when I watched it, I guess. I thought it was as subtle as a sledgehammer to the kneecap.
I didn’t think it was very subtle either. Granted Oz didn’t explicitly tell us like Dorothy but the parallels were easier to spot because of the character development while in Kansas. This one had more expository dialogue than the '39 movie, and also Zach Braff’s voice is unmistakable.
I did like the signpost that said “China Town” though. There was a mild titter throughout the crowd when it paid off. I don’t think kids got it but a good portion of the adults did.
Oz himself was pretty slow on the uptake.